CHEROKEE PHOENIX AND INDIANS' ADVOCATE
Wednesday April 22, 1829
Vol. II, no. 6
Page 3, col. 1a-1b

Emigrating Creeks.- The number of Creek Indians who have already emigrated beyond the Mississippi is about 1400; the number remaining behind, about 15,000.  The principal village at which the emigrants are located, is one on the Verdigris River, at the head of steam navigation and but four miles from Cantonment Gibson.  Col. Arbuckle is stationed with about 300 U. States troops.  Distance from the mouth of the Arkansaw [sic], according to the windings of the river, 600 miles, by land 300.

 Among the Creeks, there is evidently a greater disposition to emigrate than among the Cherokees and it is possible that the whole tribe will at length consent to remove.  One important advantage which they will gain by the measure, and perhaps the only one, is an escape from the vexation occasioned by bad neighbors.  But by going too far into the wilderness where their roving disposition will have freer scene, and hunting be pursued instead of agriculture, it is almost inevitable that their progress towards civilization will be greatly retarded.

 If Georgia and Co. could be willing to let them remain where they are without molestation, it would be the happiest condition on the whole, which they can ever expect to enjoy.  So far as the scattered Indians of New England & New York are concerned there is good sense in what is said by the advocates of removal; because an Indian population intermixed with whites, or so small as to amount to the same thing, is sure to become extinct.  But where they are collected in a large body, as in the case of the Creeks and Cherokees, and provided with a sufficient extent of territory, it matters not by whom they are surrounded, if only they can be let alone, and their internal policy not be disturbed as has lately been done by the Georgians.---Jour. of Com.

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